Comments: phpBB remote backup program

14 comments

The following Perl program allows you to make a remote back up of the
MySQL database used by the well known Open Source bulletin board package phpBB.
I have been using this Perl program for several months to back up the data
of two phpBB message boards.

Comments

Hey,
Just bumped into this script. Thanks a lot !
It works like a charm !

Posted by jbors at 02:29 GMT on 6 October 2005

Hi,

I am not sure what this script does. Can someone please explain more.
It seems that we can take backup of the PHPBB database thru' a remote
site. Is it true? Does this script automatically delete the old created
backup files when the new backup file is created.

Yes, it makes it possible to make a backup of a phpBB database on
another computer.

You can use the -f option to specify a file, and yes, this will
overwrite the old one. However, I recommend to use a back up directory,
store this on, for example CD, on a weekly or monthly basis, and delete
the files that are at least on 2 CDs only.

Posted by John Bokma at 05:48 GMT on 21 November 2005

Can't get this to work. keep getting 'no backup download link found'.
I've tried with perl on linux and also a fresh install of activeperl. I
wish I knew perl well enough to debug it

I found out the bug. You must not be running the most current version
of phpBB. They added a new re-login feature to the admin section. Even
if you are logged in , you must re-login to get to the admin section.
This is where the script is stuck.

Im sure this is due to the larger size of this phpbb database. Is there
some setting that could increase the capability of the script to
download larger files? Perhaps its a php.ini setting, perhaps its a
Apache setting. Thanks

The largest back up I have been able to create so far is over 9 MB. If you're
able to manually make a back up via the administration panel of phpBB, the script
should be able too.

Can you check the script fails every time, but the manual back up just works fine?

Thanks

Posted by John Bokma at 05:06 GMT on 9 December 2005

Great stuff! Once I installed all the required Perl modules (and learnt
to use cpan in the process) this worked super smoothly. Thanks!

Posted by Rewbs at 01:52 GMT on 20 April 2006

Hi! I can't get it working. I've tried several times but i recieve
error 500.
I use ASCII transfer, set perm. to 755; put it where is O.K...
Do i have to change something in the code?
pls help

Posted by Geo at 16:09 GMT on 13 June 2006

I just found your script in a google groups thread. I have no idea if
it works, but I'd like to say thanks for making it freely available
anyway.

I know absolutely squat about perl and only slightly more about phpbb
admin. I've been administering a free phpbb message board for over a
year now and the server has taken a huge turn for the worse. I'm
trying to move to my own server, but the owner of my current board's
server has disabled backup in the admin panel. I *REALLY* donít want
to lose all of the messages my group currently has. So, my first
question is, will this script work if the backup feature has been
disabled on my board?

Also, since I'm a total dunce about perl but would love to use your
script, it would be helpful if you had a simple "Here's what you need
to do to run my scipt" post. Maybe like "1 - download and install
perl. 2 - do whatever with my script. 3 - run the script."

I'm probably greatly oversimplifying things, but I hope you get my
drift.

Thanks,
Max.

Posted by Max at 13:15 GMT on 8 September 2006

Well, after sending you a message earlier today, I decided I should be
good enough with computers that I can figure this out without explicit
instructions. So, long story short, I got the script runnnig. Yay for
me! :) The bad news is that I'm getting the error 'no backup download
link found'. I'm afraid that I'm probably getting this error because
the site owner has turned off my ability to backup from the admin
panel. Would you agree with that assessment?

Thanks for the code, though. I'm sure it'll make things much easier in
the future once I move my forum on to my own web site.

Max.

Posted by Max at 19:33 GMT on 8 September 2006

If I get the following error:

: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

what is the most likely explanation? Is it saying that my argument to
the -d or -f flag is not valid?

I'm not a perl expert I'm afraid... =(

Posted by 3N1GM4 at 10:55 GMT on 28 December 2006

@3N1GM4 - I am guessing that you uploaded the file to a
computer running GNU/Linux, *BSD, or similar operating system?

The bad interpreter might be caused by using the wrong line endings, i.e.
using DOS line endings instead of UNIX line endings. See
A simple Perl Program to test CGI.

Posted by John Bokma at 22:18 GMT on 31 January 2007

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